Monday, September 15, 2014

Essence and Conscious Ego, part I

He talks about how essence continues to grow at expense of personality. I was wondering: is what is meant by personality, exactly, "ego" as it's called in a lot of other places?

Answer:

This idea is easily misunderstood in an outward way; that is, what usually hears it and interprets it is personality.

Personality and essence are not so much opposing forces (which it kind of sounds like here) as entirely different creatures. Each one is a creature; that is, in addition to Eckhart's quite precise meaning of the word (creations of God) they are organisms, much like living animals. They are joined in the body, and are symbiotic. That is, actually, on this level they definitely need each other because they ought to be mutually supporting each other's growth, and personality is the outward being through which essence manifests its inwardness towards an outward world.

The difference between them is that essence is spiritual; it begins in and is of God, and touches Him at its most intimate point; whereas personality cannot do this, because it belongs to the natural world.

Essence has a completely different nature than personality, and personality (which thinks very highly of itself and would never believe what I'm about to say) can't conceive of or understand it.

They are as different as eyes and ears; you can't teach an ear to see yellow and you can't teach an eye to hear b flat minor. Being-your consciousness- can do both at the same time. So essence is the organ that touches God; personality is the organ that touches the world; and Being stands between the two.

But they don't quite know one another's worlds. When essence is strong, personality seems mystifying; and when personality is strong essence is entirely theoretical. One has to have been wholly in both, with a thread to the other, in order to understand this. Dwelling in essence is like coming home. You won't meet too many people who have actual experience of essence; but it's an unmistakable manifestation. It is the difference between being alive and being dead, in the way that Christ used the terms.

The reason essence needs to grow is that it's badly atrophied; personality dominates because we are so outward. The idea of going strongly inward to combat that, however, is mistaken, because there ought to be a balance; and personality being as strong as it is, if you try to fight it or force it, it will win. That's because of its allegiance to ego. Ego is more or less the muscle or power of personality; it is what imparts force, and the more it believes in itself the greater a force it can produce.

To say essence grows "at the expense" of personality is first to presume essence grows at all; and it usually doesn't. The organic sense of Being is closely tied to essence; it is the force or motive power for essence and is thus the polar opposite of ego.

Another way of putting this would be to say there is an outward ego connected to personality, which is a mechanical muscular reflex of force against the outer world; and there is an inward ego connected to the active sensation of Being; which is why Gurdjieff said that the organic sensation of Being creates your individuality.

The outward ego is natural and dies with the body. The inward ego helps create what lasts after death. One is turned outward, facing away from God; the other turns inward towards Him. This is part of what conscious egoism means- it is inward egoism, as I have just described. Perhaps this helps clear that up a bit. The term is heard in the Gurdjieff Work, but a precise understanding can be hard to come by, especially when it is simply latched on to by personality without any real experience of active essence. Many speak of these things without an exact understanding... often no understanding at all. They are just repeating things they have heard. It takes years of being in relationship with one's active essence in order to begin to understand the question correctly.

When essence grows-a more accurate expression might be to say it awakens- it is only at the "expense" of personality to the extent that personality acquires a balancing factor. It's still there... You still need it. It can help you by becoming a major tool in understanding your own nothingness; and so rather than attempting to overcome or banish ego, it's a good idea to engage it and turn it to useful purposes.

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Recommendations and current reading list

Lee's current reading list (all recommended)

The Iceberg- Marion Coutts. This extraordinary book deserves to be read by every individual engaged in an inner search. The questions it raises about life, death, and relationship are framed by the authors responsibilities to her very young child and her dying husband. This is a book about real work in life, not esoteric theory.

Far From The Tree: Andrew Solomon. Parents, Children and the Search for Identity. Highly recommended.

Inner Yoga, Sri Anirvan—This extraordinary book is essential reading for any serious student of Gurdjieff or Yoga practice. Written at a level of both practical and philosophical discourse well above other contemporary work, Anirvan investigates the deep roots of Yoga practice, theory, and philosophy in a deeply sensitive series of insights. Of particular interest is the extraordinary and challenging piece on Buddhi and Buddhiyoga, which examines the questions of practice, life, and death with an acuity rarely encountered in other work of this nature.

Divine Love and Wisdom, Emmanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg gives us a detailed report on Reality as received from higher sources, reflecting many Truths one would be wise to study carefully. Readers will be astounded by the extraordinary degree of correlation between Swedenborg and Ibn 'Arabi. Many fundamental principles introduced by Gurdjieff are also expounded on in fascinating detail by Swedenborg. All of Swedenborg's works are well worth reading.

The Divine Governance of the Human Kingdom, Ibn 'Arabi. Another real gem, this book ought to be read by every seeker on the spiritual path. If you can only find the time to read one book by Ibn 'Arabi, this ought to be the one. By turns lighthearted, serious, insightful, and ingenius, al 'Arabi introduces us to our inner government character by character, explains their relationships, and indicates how to bring them into a state of harmonious cooperation. Written with love, the book deftly manages to avoid being didactic, delivering instead a sensitive, poetic, and even romantic look at how to organize our inner Being.

The Bezels of Wisdom—Ibn al 'Arabi. A compendium of observations about the nature of "The Reality"—what al 'Arabi calls God— from a 13th century Sufi master. This towering work easily holds its own against—and is worthy of comparison to—13th century masterpieces from other major religious traditions such as Dogen's Shobogenzo and Meister Eckhart's sermons.